I have just returned home
from a Saturday town hall meeting with Republican Freshman Congressman Adam Kinzinger of
Illinois' 11th Congressional District, and more than the bit of
civil contention over issues that were addressed there, it struck me that the
facts and figures presented with the pie charts on the screen were largely
misleading. They were, of course, misleading because they were intended to
support measures like Paul Ryan's budget plan that crumbles to dust like a
vampire in sunlight without such support.

Mark Twain wrote in his
autobiography, "Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the
arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would
often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies,
damned lies and statistics." It seems
that Congressman Kinzinger's figures are exemplary of the remark attributed to
Disraeli.

So, if a conscious effort to
do harm in service of an ignoble agenda is supported by deception, is that the
Devil's favorite lie? Not by a long shot. The Devil's favorite lie is contained
in the premise for that deception. It is a premise that the right has been
pushing for a long time, and it has been advanced by corporate media and has
burrowed into the public's subconscious.

The Devil's favorite lie is
that truth and falsehood are equally valid. That they are simply two sides of
the same coin, and a person is to be held blameless for holding with one or the
other. It simply is not so, but it stands to reason, that the Devil's favorite
lie would work to corrupt the first principles of truth.

It is in embracing that lie,
as the rest of his party has, that Congressman Kinzinger had the gall to
present his bald faced statistics. That is why when the Congressman was
challenged over his support for the privatization of Medicare that was
contained in his vote to approve the Ryan budget, he said that it was not
privatization, it was giving seniors more choice in the health care that they
receive. When challenged on his support for corporate welfare he said that we
have to fix the loopholes and reduce the corporate tax rate, in spite of his
consistent votes in support of that corporate welfare. It is why the
Congressman could say that we need to subsidize the most profitable
corporations in the world to encourage their drilling for oil in spite of a
glut of petroleum on the speculation ridden market and no guarantee that the
resources developed would benefit the U.S. It is how he presents a cut in the
corporate tax rate as a way to create the jobs that have not materialized in
thirty years of their sure fire plans to produce them.

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Indeed, the entire
presentation was a tissue of talking points lies developed to defuse voter
anger about the assault on their liberty, security and wealth by the corporate
paymasters with whom Congressman Kinzinger so often shares a free, or more
accurately, profitable, lunch.

Such an exercise would be
impossible to conduct without the Devil's favorite lie laying the groundwork
for its success.

The Devil's favorite lie is
told and retold in our corporate media, when they allow obvious lies to pass
without comment, particularly in their interviews with politicians and captains
of industry. It is told when they use their "editorial policy" to promote the
lies that benefit the corporate movement while quashing those stories that
contradict the lies that they are telling. It is retold when they continue to
offer themselves as arbiters of public virtue.

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We may take some comfort in
the observation that more and more citizens are detecting the Devil's foul
breath when these lies are told, in large part due to the sting of reality that
is raising their consciousness and stirring them to action. As they or those
that they are close to are affected by these harmful policies, the split
reality between what they hear and what they see looms large. We must ask
ourselves what we can do to accelerate the phenomenon.

We have been taught that the
truth will always win out, and there is no reason to doubt that statement on
its face. There is, however, no guarantee of it working within a time frame
that will benefit we who are being so aggressively lied to. It will take a
little help to extend realization of the truth to enough of our countrymen that
the lies can be seen as invalid, and effectively opposed.

It's up to us.

In a disconcerting
peripheral development, this town hall meeting gave me an opportunity to
observe what Jared Loughner has given the nation, or at least that for which he
provided the rationale.

Stationed
on a balcony above and to the left of the stage where the Congressman stood,
was a policeman armed with what appeared to be an M-16 assault rifle, held at
the ready, apparently to repel any aggressive gesture. It saddened me to note
that while security in this country has always assumed every person to be a
potential thief, it now assumed everyone to be a potential murderer as well.

I am a lifelong resident of the Chicago suburbs, with a several year hiatus to serve in the Navy when my Vietnam era draft notice turned up. I had been told that guys with last names like mine were among the preferred cannon fodder in the Army, so (more...)